


Opt

by Alias (anafabula)



Series: you must know where you stop and the world begins [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Banned Together Bingo 2020, But also, Canon Public Humiliation, Canon-Typical Beholding, Canonical Beholding Powers, Character Study, Episode: e161 Dwelling (The Magnus Archives), Now With More Dramatic Irony, Other, and food, canon-typical levels of jon's low self-esteem, elias is always elias, in more ways than one!, it’s the thing about the cake., not necessary to read the others in the series, other people aren’t having a great time either but they’re less specific in their miseries, season 1 setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28832622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: The Magnus Institute is full of eyes, naturally enough.It’s the little things that make it all worth his while, really.
Relationships: The Beholding & Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus
Series: you must know where you stop and the world begins [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1217580
Kudos: 6





	Opt

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: “`Spying`”.
> 
> (Sometimes people looking for advice ask me what Elias eats. To which my answer is, invariably save the attempts to be polite when I am given to understand to be polite is to obfuscate this, ‘Sorry, I thought that was obvious.’)

The Magnus Institute is full of eyes, naturally enough. The eyes of those working within it, first and most unavoidable – he does his best, these days, actually, for variety’s sake if not necessarily the law’s, but it’s still neither a workplace nor an institution particularly amenable to real blindness – and Elias personally tends towards those most of all, for the balance of variety and usefulness, even if it’s hardly uncommon for someone whose eyes he’s Watching from to make his head swim uncomfortably with a sudden jerk or glance. Just a kind of verisimilitude, really, especially with the likelihood of the individual colouring that viewpoint having their own sense of unhappy reluctance to add a bit of flavour.

It’s a trade-off, of course, now that he’s practiced with the various options enough for which one he favours to be a question of logistics and day-to-day taste; printed and drawn eyes have the opposite limitation, unnaturally still on the one hand and without any of the fuss of blinking or distraction on the other. He feels a different kind of affinity for them than for the more human sort, uncomplicated and comfortably proprietary, something he’s indulged for years. 

Perhaps that’s the heart of why it did pain him – stinging, lancing irritation as opposed to injury, but an inconvenient and noticeable pain nonetheless – when Gertrude started in on her little affectation of cutting out eyes otherwise available to her, the pressure headache entailed by using her own instead in particular hardly helping Elias’s tolerance for Watching her go about such things. Not that he’s uncreative enough to have failed to follow her regardless, but that it’s the _principle_ of the thing, a sense of personal revulsion pared with insult at anything that narrows the range of opportunity – when he’s at a slight disadvantage, comparatively, the further away from his own locus of power he’s trying to Look to begin with, besides.

Inside his own Institute, of course, avoiding Elias’s attention is fruitless on more levels than bear examining, even for as informed an enemy as his previous Archivist made herself out to be. Much as it would irritate and then pain him for someone to burn photographs and stow away art and sequester themselves, entrenched in the idea of opposing him, with hostility and ignorance as their shield – throughout this building in particular, so small and subtle as to require already knowing they’re there to even notice, there are other eyes besides. Quietly texturing the walls and the bookshelves, unseen where they blend into doors, only noticeable as the barest embossing if one already knows where to look. 

It would be self-indulgence if it weren’t practical; it would be dangerously obvious if it didn’t by and large go ignored. As the matter stands, anyone liable to notice that the building is _covered_ in iconographic eyes – anyone both obsessively observant enough to be able, and in a position to spend the necessary time in the first place – is all but guaranteed to either enjoy it as a conceit or fold it into a quiet, private dread with minimal risk of sharing knowledge that would become anyone else’s problem. 

Often both, even.

He’s spoiled for choice, as such, when it comes to checking the Archives especially, and indulges himself flitting about the various options at first as soon as he notices the not-unexpected late-morning commotion.

It’s not the near-constant crawling sense of unprompted shame that attracted Elias to his newest Archivist, by any means, but he can’t say it didn’t help. Separate from and interwoven with the more distinctive, life-defining trauma – he’d likely have found an excuse to hate himself this much anyway, if it hadn’t been handed to him outright, but isn’t it lovely when things are simpler? With the beginning of his lifetime coloured by a failure to be loved or fit in, and then his childhood having turned to pivot around a _reason_ for both, and the reason being so near to impossible for Jon to examine himself, let alone hold up for an outside observer who might have brought any kinder perspective. 

With all the eyes at hand and running tape besides, it would be almost easier than not for Elias to merely Watch today’s particular tableau of pathetic awkwardness – the way such little things still make Jon feel scrutinised beyond what he can bear, any gesture towards control inviting more attention; something that could be benign transformed into sharp, guilty threat – as it trickles pleasantly into his awareness from above, comfortably ensconced in his office as usual. Elias could take it in leisurely and without the split distraction of involving himself, perhaps use the distance to determine _what_ exactly it is that Jon thinks he has against his own age while he’s at it. The simple satisfaction of mundane public humiliation, engaging as it may be, is hardly enough to require Elias’s presence to consume beyond his personal attention.

He gets up anyway, though not quite hurried. This isn’t stopping any time soon, if Jon’s assistants and would-be friends have any say in it, and Elias would distinctly benefit from taking the opportunity to drink in the rest of his awkward little scene first-hand. In more ways than one, no less.

After all, he certainly wouldn’t mind dessert, either. 

**Author's Note:**

> I eat comments.


End file.
